Scoring

Ease of Use

The site's search bar allows users to browse by state or provider type (doctors, hospitals, or nursing homes). Results can be helpfully ranked from highest- to lowest-ranked scores. The homepage also provides access to information about the site's unique rating system. Sometimes the filtering doesn't work, but otherwise the the website is very straightforward.

Visual Design

The website strangely uses only the left-side of the viewport, whereas the entire right half is bare white space. The font is small, pages are crowded, and there are few if any images to liven up the text.

Quality

The Informed Patient Institute has a high-quality and transparent review criteria. As with most rating systems, some criteria like quality of content and timeliness are objective. Others are subjective and depend on the reviewer's interpretation. But overall the individual reviews are succinct and contain a nice list of pros/cons.

Credibility

Most of the doctor and hospital sites available on the Informed Patient Institute have been reviewed within the last two years. Other areas of the website, like the blog and news postings, are not regularly updated. The primary concern is that nursing home ratings have not been checked recently; most reviews are more than four years old, including some more than six years old. Many of the criteria are objective and, although it is important to include the credentials of individuals rating the sites, there is no indication who they are.

Pros

Search features allow users to access website reviews by state and type of care

Checklist of pros and cons for each site means users will get the takeaway quickly

Site offers a clear explanation of its ranking criteria and methods

Cons

Some states do not have all three provider types available to search

Consumers looking for information about healthcare costs/quality and patient safety on the site will be disappointed